Page 34 - Aamir Rehman - Dubai & Co Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States-McGraw-Hill (2007)

20 Dubai & Co.

ongoing assumption that Middle Eastern businesses lack sophisti-
cation; as in any emerging market, there is a range of savvy that
includes a number of top-notch global firms.
A large part of this confusion occurs because the term Middle
East has always been a fuzzy one. Its definition varies widely
depending on whom you ask, and its perimeter is redrawn as polit-
ical sentiments shift. As historian Roger Adelson and others have
rightly pointed out, the term is an invention of the Western pow-
ers—in particular, the UK—whose purpose was to define a region
to their east but less remote than China and the Pacific. Whereas the
French had coined the term “Near East” for the Ottoman Empire,
the term “Middle East” first appeared in the UK’s National Review
magazine in 1902, in an article authored by an American military
strategist. A 1903 work used the term in its title—The Middle East
Question of Some Problems of Indian Defense—but used it for a broad
swath of territory including Tibet, Afghanistan, and other nations
near India that few would count in the “Middle East” today. After
this use in 1903, the term was no longer novel and ceased to appear
with quotation marks. 1
The term also includes a very diverse set of countries that
share some common elements but are in many ways vastly differ-
ent. Some are mainly desert, others have abundant agriculture.
Some are riddled with conflict and are “hot spots” for war; others
are highly stable. Some are wealthy; others are not.
In political circles, too, the term continues to be ill-defined. One
classic definition of the “Middle East” is that it includes all Arabic-
speaking countries plus Israel. Iran and Turkey, depending on
whom you ask, can also be thought of as peripheral “Middle
Eastern” states. In recent years, language referring to the United
States’ “War on Terror” has often included Pakistan and
Afghanistan—long seen as parts of South and Central Asia,
respectively—within the rubric. Academic centers, including
Harvard University, are not spared the confusion: Harvard’s aca-
demic department covering the region is called “Near Eastern
Languages and Civilizations,” while an interdisciplinary center that
studies the area (created later on) is called the “Center for Middle
Eastern Studies.” Adding to the complexity, the Bush administration
has introduced the term “Broader Middle East and North Africa,”
2
for which it has defined policy initiatives. The United Nations,